Saturday, September 26, 2009

Climate Change This Week

The Star on Wednesday: residents of the Cateret Islands expect, in the near future, to become "the world's first climate-change refugees." Which I guess means the total of climate change refugees so far, to this date, is still zero. Sea level is not one number all over the world, Pacific and Atlantic are usually different, levels can differ in a local area, etc.

In Australia we have seen recent reports that up to 75 million people may be displaced due to climate change in the Asia Pacific over the next 40 years as reported by the ABC here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/27/2637587.htm

(You may also recall incidentally that the UN itself said in 2005 that there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010, but that’s by the by.)

I took the liberty of going to the Australia Institute website to look at the paper they are talking about which is the pdf attached to this page: https://www.tai.org.au/index.php?q=node%2F19&act=display&type=1&pubid=602

…[The 75 million figure is on the Oxfam page: http://www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/climate-change/docs/The-future-is-here-final-report.pdf

Now the UK’s Daily Telegraph and several other sources are reporting that “More than 75 million people living on Pacific islands will have to relocate by 2050 because of the effects of climate change, Oxfam has warned.”

You will note that no longer does it say “up to”, now it says “more than”. Of course, displacing more than 75 million people would be quite a trick, as the entire population of the Pacific Islands is not more than 1.6 million people, or maybe 6 million if you include PNG [Papua New Guinea]: http://www.hawaii.edu/cpis/psi/anthro/pac_dev/Pac_Dev6.html